Spiritual Abuse

Did you know there is such a thing as spiritual abuse?

Often, when we talk about this issue, our minds automatically go to some of the headlines that we've seen in recent years - about pastors who have fallen for one reason or another. The sexual abuse of minors and women in the church. The financial exploitation of followers. The secret things that men (sometimes women, but usually men) in church leadership have been getting away with for years, sometimes decades, that finally come to light and become scandal.

While spiritual abuse is scandalous, it's very rarely the kind of scandal we're talking about. It doesn't usually make headlines. The headlines that readily pop into our heads may have a component of spiritual abuse, but at their core, they are other types of crimes that just happen to take place in a spiritual setting. 

What I want to talk about now is actual spiritual abuse - the traumatic victimization of a person's relationship with God for whatever broken human nature lies behind it. 

The difference is that when scandals like the ones in the headlines break, everyone kind of stops to reflect on how God could let something like this happen. How does God enable men like these to be in these positions and to get away with these things? These scandals bring to our minds the questions of theodicy that we wrestle with so frequently - why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer? 

But true spiritual abuse is even more devious. True spiritual abuse leaves us questioning whether God even loves us. It leaves us questioning whether God ever could love us. It calls into question everything we think we know about God and ourselves, and it contradicts what we've read in the Bible at every turn. 

Often, those who experience spiritual abuse end up in a place where they believe that what the Scriptures say about God are true - He is good; He is merciful; He is loving; He is gracious; He has died for our sins that we may one day live with Him in Paradise. But they also end up believing that all of those things about God are true for everyone but them. That is, God is good, but He's not good to you. God is merciful, but He's not merciful to you. He is loving, but He doesn't love you. He died for our sins, but not yours. 

You are a wicked person who is neither deserving of nor receiving the goodness of God...and it's not God's fault; it's yours. 

A skilled spiritual abuser will make you think this is a reflection on you and that God wants to love you, but you just make it too difficult. You're too hard to love. You're messing up too much. 

They will also usually dramatically inflate their own role in your salvation, how important it is that you listen to them, how they are doing their best to "safeguard" you against your own self, how they only have your best interest at heart. 

They can get you to a place where God will really love you, they promise, but it's going to take a lot of effort. You are just such a piece of work. And they make you believe that your relationship with God hinges on their wisdom and insight until you are so crippled in your faith that you're not even sure you have any any more. 

Slowly but surely, they chip away at your soul until there's almost nothing left, until you become exactly what they've told you all along that you are - empty. defeated. desolate. a nobody. Once their "prophecy" (their "truth-telling") over your life has come true, or so it seems, they've got you. 

So what does spiritual abuse look like and how does it happen? 

It's simpler...and quieter...and less headline-y than you might think.